Category Archives: Uncategorised

Here in the OU Maths Education department we have been having some interesting discussions about the specific words we use when talking about teaching practice. In this post we discuss the variety of ways in which examples are used in … Continue reading →

Rebecca Would is a sixth-form work experience student who visited the Maths and Stats department of the OU and supported the School Maths Conference. This is her report. In July the OU ran a maths conference in conjunction with some … Continue reading →

This blog post was written by OU student Jim Darby. We have republished this (with permission) from Jim’s personal blog. Jim has encapsulated the learning outcomes of reflecting on his own thinking and appreciating the range of learners thinking. Jim … Continue reading →

This post was written by Nazanin Nikanjam, a mathematics education student who received the 2019 Open University Stanley Collings prize for her writing. I have been teaching Mathematics and English as an Additional Language for the past 26 years, with … Continue reading →

Written by Gerry Golding Hello, I’m Gerry Golding, deputy chair of Developing Statistical Thinking (ME626). In this blog I would like to tell you about a new and exciting scholarship project that Andrew Potter and I are about to undertake. … Continue reading →

This blog is part of a conversation between Cathy Smith, Ruth Edwards and  Jayne Webster, discussing a ‘mastery approach’ lesson. We have taken some topics from the conversation: setting a context, careful choice of language, different representations, small steps  and reasoning. … Continue reading →

Written by Brigitte Stenhouse, PhD student in History of Mathematics at the Open University. The reactions I get when I tell people that my PhD is in History of Maths invariably involve some surprise: history and maths aren’t an obvious … Continue reading →

There is a question in a recent Foundation level GCSE paper that asks: How would you go about this question? I can think of three ways. I could set up algebraic expressions for the length and width. I could draw … Continue reading →

Written by Hilary Holmes, Open University Staff Tutor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics. One of the great things about working for the OU is that occasionally we are able to share lots of wonderful mathematical ideas with hundreds … Continue reading →

In his famous book ‘The Descent of Man’ and as part of a discussion on the sense of beauty Charles Darwin commented: “The eye prefers symmetry or figures with some regular occurrence”. (Darwin, 1887, p. 93). In mathematics the definition … Continue reading →